accountability

Anyone know of a local alternative to #Microsoft and some other #software and #hardware technologies and upgrades?

Does sustaining local enterprise mean disconnecting from global technologies?

Those who know me know I do not like shopping and am an advocate to #BuyLocal so I would appreciate info so as to avoid that new #7%Tax in addition to the other taxes already … see more www.kris-rampersad.blogspot.com

Statement by Dr Kris Rampersad on Trinidad and Tobago’s handling of matters related to UNESCO

Summary of main issues and concerns: This statement follows a series of unsuccessful attempts to access existing democratic mechanism and processes for clarification and to correct the Parliamentary and public records on actions and statements by members of the Government since November 2015 in relation to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations (UNESCO) on activities in which I was legitimately engaged as a citizen and national of Trinidad and Tobago.

This occurred within and around the work of this organisation, UNESCO, devoted to promoting intercultural dialogue, peaceful negotiations and conflict resolution, in an already highly tense international meeting that involved balancing various extreme elements, and in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Paris in November 2015 which put further pressures on the already stressed peace-building systems and which cast a shadow over actions of officials from Trinidad and Tobago and the country’s engagement with its international partners, as well as raised questions about its treatment of nationals.

Returning to private life, my approach to date has been to allow established mechanisms and procedures to address this matter.

However, using the cover of powers, privileges and immunities of Parliament both the Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, the Honourable Lovell Francis in the House of Representatives on January 22, 2016 and the Minister of Education, the Honourable Anthony Garcia in the Senate on January 26, 2016 have distorted the facts with omissions, misalignments and misrepresentations of dates, sequences and chronologies; exhibiting as the line officials on UNESCO matters considerable deficiencies in knowledge and understanding about matters under their jurisdiction and portfolios on the roles and functions of offices, institutions, organisations and persons and processes, procedures and roles, functions and mechanisms and of international and national systems therein. This has cast further confusion over the issues about which I have been asked by various quarters nationally and internationally to clarify…. for more click here

Like this:

When the meteorologist theorised that the cloudy, hazy days of the dry season in our region could be attributed to dust clouds from way across the Arabian dessert, he was – as many-a-novel-idea-throughout history has been – scoffed at laughed away for a number of years. But now, that theory is entrenched in descriptions of the weather patterns and conditions of this part of the world. Some modern geography texts and the guide books of some of the countries of the Caribbean, South America and the Amazon tell of the amazing displacement of dust from the Sahara desert more than half way across the world: Sahara Dust.

I am not sure if you are feeling it, but there are some breezes, some fresh, some even containing some disruptive dust elements, that are again blowing from across the desert over there, this, our way. And these are not seasonal. They feel much like the breezes of the Arab Spring – that have swept through the Middle East and Africa – Libya, Burma, Egypt, Tunisia, Côte d’ivoire, Guinea, Yemen, Lesotho, Senegal, Malawi and Sierra Leone. In some others, the breezes were still heavily laden with dust, there were setbacks for freedom – Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. It has also spread with positive change in Bhutan, Indian Kashmir Mongolia and Tonga.

Wherever these breezes have passed, they have left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed peoples demanding a stronger voice in their own governance and opening up new opportunities for reform in countries otherwise marked by severe abuses of fundamental rights and civil liberties.

Such additional demands on governments and public and private institutions for greater transparency, accountability, responsibility, fairness, balance and equity, performance and delivery of goods and services are pressuring not only so called anti democracies but also well established democracies of Americas, Europe and Asia. But in other parts there is a backlash and the breezes have been met with counter reprisals of oppressive curbs to civil liberties, human rights and freedoms.

So do you feel it? Here I mean, in the Caribbean. Or is it that we are in that time lag – between being informed and accepting the information? Given that unlike other countries we perhaps have some lead time to prepare, have we considered in any cohesive way what our response would be: do we want to embrace this or shut the door on it – because, to quote a former Prime Minister, speaking in a similar context – no one shall remain unscathed…. Next: Addressing the Democratic DeficitSee….the dawn of Trinidad and Tobago’s Arab Spring…..read more in The Clash of Political Cultures – Cultural Diversity & Minority Politics in Trinidad and Tobago in Through the Political Glass Ceiling. Get Your Copy today Order NOW SPECIAL ELECTION DISCOUNT; email lolleaves@gmail.com; visit https://sites.google.com/site/krisrampersadglobal or visit Demokrissy: http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com

February 2018

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Leader4Dev Multistakeholder Multimedia Multicultural Sustainable Development Educator Facilitator Producer Publisher
A independent sustainable development global thought leader and change agent functioning as consultant/facilitator, educator & conventional & web content multimedia producer/publisher and journalist with some three decades experience in media and as a cultural practitioner and more than a decade in devising novel approaches to multistakeholder outreach and engagement that integrate revisioning and synergises of sectoral vision and objectives delivered through culture and gender sensitive lenses.
A print and television journalist with more than a decade experience in building multi-sectoral partnerships with international intergovernmental agencies and promotion of sustainable development for social equity and inclusion for poverty eradication, food security, sound governance through education, literacy, communications, heritage and culture, civic participation, democratic engagement social justice & equality to give effect to the knowledge/ICTs and creative economies.
BA First Class Honours and PhD degrees from the University of the West Indies (UWI); Diploma in Mass Communications, Jawaharlal Nehru University; skills development training in management, leadership, diversity management, ICTs and new media, journalism, communications, fundraising, networking, gender equity and advocacy. Recipient Commonwealth Professional Fellowship; Fellowship to Wolfson College, Cambridge University; the Foreign Press Centre of Japan, UWI post graduate scholar among others.
Culling sustainable knowledge culture for heritage tourism and literacy in own initiative Leaves of Life through LiTTributes, LiTTevents & LiTTours,
Author of Finding A Place &Through the Political Glass Ceiling, LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago.
Awards for journalism, arts, culture: Luminary 2015,Media Award for Excellence in Journalism, Pan American Health Organisation Award for Excellence in Journalism; Awards top student IIMC, UWI; Development Policy Blogging for New Media.